Academic freedom (and due process) under threat at Brooklyn Law School?

Brooklyn Law School is an independent law school in New York, a school of long-standing and good reputation, with no connection to either Brooklyn College or the City University of New York. Many of its faculty have national reputations for their scholarship, and its graduates have enjoyed successful careers in both private practice and in the public sector.

Several different sources have reported to me that the Law School's Board of Trustees has adopted the following definition of "Adequate Cause" for termination of tenured faculty:

The definition of “ Adequate Cause” will now include the term “ demonstrated incompetence".....

For purposes of the Law School’s regulations, “ Adequate Cause” shall be defined as follows:

“Demonstrated incompetence, including but not limited to, multiple unsatisfactory performance reviews or complaints from supervisors; multiple complaints from students or multiple unsatisfactory student evaluations; sub-standard academic performance; lack of collegiality.”

There is certainly an important need for American law schools to undertake a review of both their tenure standards and their standards for post-tenure review, given the dereliction of duties that are, alas, widespread (but not only in law schools, of course). But these standards are very alarming, and suggest the dangers associated with post-tenure review. The inclusion of "lack of collegiality" in the definition of "adequate cause" is unbelievable, given the AAUP's clear and wholly correct position on the issue. Any academic institution that wants to avoid sanction by the AAUP would be well-advised to scrap such a malleable criterion.

But at least as alarming is the fact that the definition equates "demonstrated incompetence" not with a peer review finding of pedagogical and scholarly incompetence, but with wholly unreliable and disreputable criteria like students evaluations, complaints from supervisors (which just smuggles "lack of collegiality" in the back door), and so on. Poor teaching evaluations can properly trigger a peer review of teaching, which could lead to a finding of incompetence. But poor teaching evaluations from students do not constitute demonstrated incompetence--for reasons the enormous empirical literature on teaching evaluations would make clear, quite apart from AAUP norms.

BLS has long benefitted from its location and its reputation in the recruitment of top-notch faculty. But unless the school quickly backtracks or clarifies these standards for termination, I am not optimistic for the school's academic future.

UPDATE: A constructive reply from BLS's Dean Allard to these concerns is here.